yres and a broken chain.

Since chauffeurs should be seen and not heard, Mr. Jack Dane looked
volumes and said not a word. Backing the big Aigle, who was sulking in
her bonnet, he put her nose to the left. Now we were making straight,
almost as the crow flies, for the Cevennes; but luckily for Lady
Turnour's peace of mind the snowy tops were hidden from sight behind
other mountains' shoulders as we approached. A warning chill was in the
air, like the breath of a ghost; but it could not find its way through
the glass; and a few cartloads of oranges which we passed opportunely
looked warm and attractive, giving a delusive suggestion of the south to
our road.

It was gipsy-land, too, for we met several tramping families: boldly
handsome women, tall, dark men and boys with eagle eyes, and big silver
buttons so well cared for they must have been precious heirlooms.
"'Steal all you can, and keep your buttons bright,' is a gipsy father's
advice to his son," said Jack Dane, as we wormed up the road toward a
pass where the brown mountains seemed to open a narrow, mysterious
doorway. So, fold upon fold shut us in, as if we had entered a vast maze
from which we might never find our way out; and soon there was no trace
of man's work anywhere, except the zigzag lines of road which, as we
glanced up or down, looked like thin, pale brown string tied as a child
ties a "cat's-cradle." We were in the ancient fastnesses of the
Camisards; and this world of dark rock under clouding sky was so stern,
so wildly impressive, that it seemed a country hewn especially for
religious martyrs, a last stand for such men as fought and died praying,
calling themselves "enfants de Dieu." Bending out from the front seat of
the motor, my gaze plunged far down into the beds of foaming rivers, or
soared far up to the dazzling white world of snow and steely sky toward
which we steadily forged on. Oh, there was no hope of hiding the snow
now from those whom it might concern! But Lady Turnour still believed,
perhaps, that we should avoid it.

The higher the Aigle rose, climbing the wonderful road of snakelike
twistings and turnings above sheer precipices, the more thrilling was
the effect of the savage landscape upon our souls--those of us who
consciously possess souls.

We had met nobody for a long time now; for, since leaving the region of
pines, we seemed to have passed beyond the road-mender zone, and the
zone of waggons loaded with dry branches like pi